World-Record OS Reinstallation Time

My brother ordered a new laptop before heading off to
college, and rather than take it out of the box and configure it myself like I
usually do (because it saves me hours of questions and lots of “Can you explain
what Feature X does”), I instead deferred the task onto him, figuring a
college-bound honor student would be able to make sense of turning it on and
getting it running with the software he uses. Oops.

The day it arrived, I hauled the box upstairs to his room
for him to find when he got home. When he got back, I heard the expected “Sweet!
It’s finally here!” Approximately twenty minutes later, I hear a knock on my
door, and open it to a rather bewildered expression plastered across my brother’s
face.

“My computer won’t start.”

<o:p></o:p>I found this odd, but figuring that it was a DOA piece of hardware, I shuffled
down the hallway into his room, where the laptop in question was sitting on the
floor, all manners of papers, plastic packaging, and more or less every game CD
he owned spread out around the room. I pressed the power button, and was
greeted with an error message that basically came down to a device driver
conflict. Puzzled at how a faulty device driver would escape a factory installation,
I asked him what he was doing when it stopped working.

<o:p></o:p>“Well…I installed (insert name of some ancient Virtual CD
Drive program here), and it said I had to reboot the system. It never came back
up again.”

<o:p></o:p>I was stunned. He had this thing out of the box for not even
twenty minutes, and it was now in an unbootable state. I've committed some pretty impressive screw-ups in my day (for example, going through and deleting all the msvcrt files back when my parents got their first Windows 95 machine to "save space"), but this was unparalleled in my memory.

Next time, I’ll set it up myself. It’ll save me the two hours of profanities and dirty looks to get the
machine back up and running again.<o:p></o:p>

I'm not sure if I trust Community Server to return information properly. However, it could be correct, but the idea was so obvious that it's pretty likely two people would come up with it. It's not likely I saw one of Lieutenant's 5 or 6 posts and decided to rip it off. Also, he didn't copy the design or colors accurately, so at least I have that.

I'm not sure if I trust Community Server to return information properly. However, it could be correct, but the idea was so obvious that it's pretty likely two people would come up with it. It's not likely I saw one of Lieutenant's 5 or 6 posts and decided to rip it off. Also, he didn't copy the design or colors accurately, so at least I have that.

And right now,Andy Warhol's rotted corpse is having a stroke.

I don't know about you, but I'm simply not going to worry about it. Move along, people. Move along.

Windows Vista? When I first installed Vista, one of the first things I tried to do was to install Daemon Tools with virtual drives... The system froze during the install process and wouldn't come back up. I managed to fix it by booting to the fancy schmancy Recovery Environment, ignoring the fact that it couldn't find anything wrong, and then using the Command Prompt they included (I guess they knew it wouldn't work automatically half the time) to futz around until i figured out what the offending driver was.

Windows Vista? When I first installed Vista, one of the first things I tried to do was to install Daemon Tools with virtual drives... The system froze during the install process and wouldn't come back up. I managed to fix it by booting to the fancy schmancy Recovery Environment, ignoring the fact that it couldn't find anything wrong, and then using the Command Prompt they included (I guess they knew it wouldn't work automatically half the time) to futz around until i figured out what the offending driver was.

ding

You are correct! Vista Home Premium. And I'm pretty sure I could have figured out how to get it back up and running again, but I reasoned that since it was a mere 20 minutes away from factory state anyway, it would have been easier to just start over again.

I always have a tendency to reinstall the OS from scratch anyhow whenever I purchase a new system. Manufactureres theses that have too many tendencies to install lotsa crapware on the system so is so much easier for me to take the orginal disk and [n|v]Lite the crap out as well as add in the new patches and drivers in one go. I always end up with a much cleaner, faster and more stable installtion than the installtion that came with the system in the first place.

Since the OP says it was "ancient", it was probably a pre-Vista version of D-Tools. I'm running v4.12.3 on Vista Home Premium 64bit just fine.

Yeah...you're absolutely right, it was D-Tools, and we got it when I bought my old workstation, in the pre-XP SP1 days. Although I'm still a bit surprised that it runs fine all the way up to SP2, but won't run on Vista 32-bit.

I always have a tendency to reinstall the OS from scratch anyhow whenever I purchase a new system. Manufactureres theses that have too many tendencies to install lotsa crapware on the system so is so much easier for me to take the orginal disk and [n|v]Lite the crap out as well as add in the new patches and drivers in one go. I always end up with a much cleaner, faster and more stable installtion than the installtion that came with the system in the first place.

I got a comp, gave my old one to my friend...It had a QUIRK in which it had a mobo problem, apparently got worse when I gave it away (it knew who it's master is!). So my friend spend 50 bucks and bought a new mobo which I recommended. To my error the mobowas not compatible with his processor (was really hard to tell, and I don't think they made mobos for the processor i gave (the first Athlon 64 that came out for public use)... Ok fine my bad... but now comes the WTF part...

He said that he replaced mobos (oh-oh) and that he can't fit the processor into the new mobo... Ok I come over and what do I see? He YANKED the old processor out, ripping many of the pins, along with the heatsink which it was stuck to via the thermal paste. Then he JAMMED it into the new mobo breaking whatever other pins were left (the heatsink was still attached). Luckely the new mobo was undamaged. He bought new processor.

Now it works, but kept crashing. Apparently windows had a problem migrating mobo/processor... OK fine... And also AOL has a bunch of undying processes that he installed which keep spawning after you kill em! They ZOMBIES!. So all this asside I tell him "Heres Windows XP isntallation disk, please format and install it" and I wrote in an email the exact instructions of what to do what to press and when to not bother me.

He says he reinstalled it, and still problems... I thought "oh shit, the hardware went kaputz!" I grab that machine, do tests on it after re-installing video drivers (video card was failing), no problem... In fact it looks like nothing was reinstalled... It looks like his installation meant, put windows xp disk into comptuer, start it, done. (no he did not press the any key to go into xp setup, and no he did not format, and no he did not install).

I got a comp, gave my old one to my friend...It had a QUIRK in which it had a mobo problem, apparently got worse when I gave it away (it knew who it's master is!). So my friend spend 50 bucks and bought a new mobo which I recommended. To my error the mobowas not compatible with his processor (was really hard to tell, and I don't think they made mobos for the processor i gave (the first Athlon 64 that came out for public use)... Ok fine my bad... but now comes the WTF part...

He said that he replaced mobos (oh-oh) and that he can't fit the processor into the new mobo... Ok I come over and what do I see? He YANKED the old processor out, ripping many of the pins, along with the heatsink which it was stuck to via the thermal paste. Then he JAMMED it into the new mobo breaking whatever other pins were left (the heatsink was still attached). Luckely the new mobo was undamaged. He bought new processor.

Now it works, but kept crashing. Apparently windows had a problem migrating mobo/processor... OK fine... And also AOL has a bunch of undying processes that he installed which keep spawning after you kill em! They ZOMBIES!. So all this asside I tell him "Heres Windows XP isntallation disk, please format and install it" and I wrote in an email the exact instructions of what to do what to press and when to not bother me.

He says he reinstalled it, and still problems... I thought "oh shit, the hardware went kaputz!" I grab that machine, do tests on it after re-installing video drivers (video card was failing), no problem... In fact it looks like nothing was reinstalled... It looks like his installation meant, put windows xp disk into comptuer, start it, done. (no he did not press the any key to go into xp setup, and no he did not format, and no he did not install).

I am currently ready to strangle!

Don't you just love the people who just expect little magical elves to come by and make things work without RTFM!?

So you gave an idiot a broken computer. You tell him to fix it. He fucks it up, thereby proving he doesn't know what he is doing.

You then tell him to fix it again. He fucks it up.

You find this surprising and frustrating.

I think I see the WTF...

No, the computer worked. When it broke I wanted to fix it up. I told him to let me do it. Many times. Instead he thought he'd take a stab at it.

The xp installation part, I was just lazy, so what?The wtf is that he didnt even try.He said "i did everything you told me to do and it didnt work"... Its like me calling Nissan a mechanic and saying "my car won't start", "did you fill it up with gas", "yes I did, it wont start", "ok let us take a look",... they tow it into their maintenance center, figure out that theres no gas..., alright?

I find it frustrating that he could not say "no i didnt do anything, I have no idea WTF im doing can you please do it for me" instead of "I did everything and nothing worked"

Edit: He knows I know that he knows jack about computers. Also I am not a tech support guy. So I expect him to be honest with me and say "im scared to" or "i dont know what im doing plz do it for me" caz i know by the time i have time to help him hell have been complaining for a while. I don't have time to go cross town daily and troubleshoot his comptuer problems.

So you gave an idiot a broken computer. You tell him to fix it. He fucks it up, thereby proving he doesn't know what he is doing.

Sorry, more info: His current comp is 7 yrs old. My crappy comp with a mobo that was a bit flimsey was a giant upgrade for him, and for free. With all purchases he had to make, he spent 200 bucks on it total now. Dual core processor athlon 64, ok mobo, 1 gb ram, Radeon x800 video card. Not bad for 200 bucks. He still uses dial-up.

So every post has more portraits in the mash-up of profile stealing. So in about 20 steal-posts there will be 1000 mini-portraits which will look more like a bunch of randomly colored dots? From there every 1.5 posts will have 2x the portraits until all the pixels in the universe will be contained within a single user's portrait.

Sorry, more info: His current comp is 7 yrs old. My crappy comp with a mobo that was a bit flimsey was a giant upgrade for him, and for free. With all purchases he had to make, he spent 200 bucks on it total now. Dual core processor athlon 64, ok mobo, 1 gb ram, Radeon x800 video card. Not bad for 200 bucks. He still uses dial-up.

Rule one: Never, EVER, give away a computer. The recipient will keep it until it's five generations obsolete, and everything that happens to it will be your problem. If your time is worth anything at all, it'll cost you less in the long run to to buy them a new machine with full tech support. I feel your pain; I used to be helpful like that, now I suffer severe selective deafness.

Sorry, more info: His current comp is 7 yrs old. My crappy comp with a mobo that was a bit flimsey was a giant upgrade for him, and for free. With all purchases he had to make, he spent 200 bucks on it total now. Dual core processor athlon 64, ok mobo, 1 gb ram, Radeon x800 video card. Not bad for 200 bucks. He still uses dial-up.

Rule one: Never, EVER, give away a computer. The recipient will keep it until it's five generations obsolete, and everything that happens to it will be your problem. If your time is worth anything at all, it'll cost you less in the long run to to buy them a new machine with full tech support. I feel your pain; I used to be helpful like that, now I suffer severe selective deafness.

The thing is, had I NOT given it to him, he would complain about not being able to play games he wanted. Also I would be fixing his current 7year old comp. That and my comp was gona go to the dumpster if I did not give it away. And it was worth something Plus now I have a happy friend willing to act as a babysitter for my daughter from time to time muahahahahahah!

Hello. U said in a recent forum that vista worked right on ur HP AMD Processor system except for Matlab.

That is why I am on this forum. My AMD system closes Matlab 7.0 after it has not finished initializing. What do you advice I do..

Thanks.

Hello dbeloved,

I had similar problems with Matlab on my AMD computator, but I was able to fix the problems. What I found out (according to matlab) the close happens when there is a resource conflict over the web access when it's (I think!) checking for updates on the mathworks website.

Anyway, the solution is quite simple, all you have to do is uninstall/delete your web browsers. You have to make sure to remove them completely.. so go to control panel, add/remove and then find all of them and uninstall them. (I had Firefox, Opera and Safari! Oh well.)

If you use Internet Explorer it's more difficult, b/c it's not easy to remove. I ended up searching the system files for all references to iexplore.exe / internet explorer and deleted them, also removed all shortcuts.

Once the browsers are gone you can start matlab without any conflicts and it'll initialize all the way and get updates too!